A young woman stargazes and projects into the infinite

Castor and Pollux, Canopus, Orion. Names given to far away bodies by people who wrote tales now nearly as distant as the stars. The Victory had amplified everything small, and diminished everything large. Great and terrible figures, institutions and legacies became less important than the dignity of a good meal spent in loving company.

Gazing towards minute dots many trillions of dimensions apart, the feeling didn’t inspire fear but rather pity. The Victory gave cause to mock the eternity of it. The infinitude bound. What despair remained in the smallness of existence where harmony reigned? What cause was there to feel mocked where people had become gods?

Drawing her thoughts close, she made them into a ball. The stars collapsed into a single slate and presented to her like a veil of smoke. Then she could understand the magnitude. It rose as she propelled her feeling into them, into the gaping space. Her stomach loosened as she stared, and then she could converse with the old myths. Their dialogue went:

‘Canopus, where will you ever go?’

‘Well indeed I am staying. I am here and have always been here.’

‘But see how quaint you are, staying there while I dance here. While I pluck grass between my fingers, dig my toes into earth, and feel the tiniest oscillations of hair in the breeze. You were named for a sailor yet you are moored for eternity. I am not trying to mock you, but what do you say to being named like that?’

‘Of course I am not burdened by it in the slightest. I mock you with my age and brilliance. So much that I have no need for conversation.’

She thought, where did these ideas burn in me? This star has no spite. I have no title to assume it. But those far-off ancestors felt they did. ‘Look’, they said, ‘that star there. Look how bright it is. What a beauty, and what utility! We shall make use of it. We shall call it by a name that recalls its utility, and not have any irony in it. As we guide ourselves by it let us name it after a Guide!’

So natural and obvious for those ancestors to dedicate their own intellect to a myth. Still, there was no glory in it. Not like the glory in the Victory. The Victory as distant from her as the ancient Gods, yet ingrained and inscribed in her, like a dye.

Turning and walking from the patch of scintillating diamond high above, she committed, ‘Tomorrow, I shall tell her, and she will hear me, and I will be free.’